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This slide (drawn
from the aforementioned study) depicts the average age of death among public
mental healthcare recipients diagnosed with Serious Mental Illness.
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The column on the
far right depicts the mean number of
“Years of Potential Life Lost” per mental health patient.
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Key Points:
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On average,
recipients of public mental healthcare in the U.S.A. were dying in the late
1990s approximately 13 to 30 years earlier than expected.
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Although these data
are now dated (1997 to 2000), they quite likely underestimate the scope of
existing mortality among Americans with SMI.
The reasons for this continuing crisis include factors which will be
discussed below.
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